This present technique relates to an imaging device and an imaging method, which may include an imaging device having a solid state imaging element and an imaging method for processing an output signal of a solid state imaging element.
In a solidstate imaging element such as a CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) image sensor or the like, a black pixel (light shielded pixel) is prepared for a pixel array, and adjustment of a black level (black clamp) is performed (for example, see Japanese Patent No. 3808349, Japanese Patent No. 3670145, Japanese Patent No. 3797186).
For the black clamp, a value in which multiple pixels are subjected to average processing for every line is generally used. In a process of the average processing, mixing of a black pixel having a too large or too small value than that of other pixels causes occurrence of a horizontal stripe noise or the like. In order to reduce the noise for improvement, many black pixels are prepared.
In order to obtain a stable average value by the average processing, a lot of black pixels are required. However, when a lot of black pixels are prepared for one line, the chip area of an image sensor is increased (since pixels are aligned in a matrix manner, when the number of pixels are increased in the horizontal direction, there is an influence (impact) to the pixel area due to the multiplication in the vertical direction).